- Location
- Andorra and Spain
This is a useful little tool for use in a variety of situations.
You can use it at the start of a walk if your dog tends to be a little fizzy when you walk out the door or get out of the car.
You can use it if you need a bit more focus.
You can use it to help your heel work.
You can use it if there's something that's making your dog anxious as an on-lead version of the pressure game: Pressure games - for when your dog is scared of thresholds or approaching something
It's very simple. You walk, very slowly, in a figure of eight pattern. If you have two posts or other sorts of markers that you can walk around, great. I often practice this on a bit of tarmac where there is a pothole at one "end" of my pattern and a discolouration in the surface at the other. What you're looking for is something you can use to keep your pattern as similar each time as possible.
If your dog is over-excited, just anchor your hand to your waist and keep walking slowly. You don't want to be dragging your dog, of course, but keeping them with you, not letting them extend the lead. they should be very close to you so they have to move away as you turn with them on the inside and they have to keep up when they are on the outside.
By repeating the same piece of ground over and over, you are losing the novelty. After five reps, ten, fifteen, twenty, however many it takes for your dog in that particular place in the state he's in, he will start to relax into the rhythm of the movement, the flow and ebb. The sights are the same each time round, as are the smells. There's nothing new to see here. Calm will descend and focus will come.
You can treat your dog for walking nicely with you, but don't lure your dog around the pattern; this exercise is about creating true calmness and focus. If your dog is the sort that gets ramped up by treats, then keep them relatively infrequent.
As with all of the tools you have in your box, you want to ensure it's sharp enough for when you want to use it, so start practicing in a boring place such as your garden to start off with, and gradually introduce it in more challenging environments. If you first try to use it when your dog is highly aroused, it could easily introduce frustration, so by letting the dog learn the mechanics in a quiet environment, he'll be able to slot into it better when you do want to use it later; he'll understand the rules.
Applications:
- This is great if you have a dog who is really excitable at the start of a walk, or if he sees other dogs in the park. Fall into your figure-of-eight and just keep walking until the rhythm soothes them and you're getting nice focus. Once your dog is calm, you can continue on your way, but if their arousal starts to rise too much again, fall back into it.
- If you have a dog who pulls forwards on lead in certain places, you can combine this with rewarding for nice position. Let's say it's the gate of the park that gets the dog excited; as you walk away, they will probably walk wonderfully, so put a lot of reinforcement in there. If the dog pulls too much walking forwards, move your pattern back away from the gate more until your dog is able to walk nicely in both directions. Get him into the rhythm and gradually drift the pattern closer.
- If your dog is maybe being a bit sniffy and you'd like a bit more focus, use the pattern until your dog starts taking more notice of you and less of their environment. When you start to get that focus, you can start changing up your pace a bit, going from fast to slow and back again, to challenge your dog. This is also fun to chuck into heel work practice. Changes of pace aren't appropriate for working on calmness, so only do this if you want to raise the energy level of your dog.
- If your dog is a bit anxious of something in the environment, using the figure-8 pattern will both help establish calmness as they understand the rules of the game, but can also allow you to use a pressure on/pressure off scenario, where your pattern has you moving both towards and away from the Scary Thing. I tend to use the pattern side-on to the trigger:
8 <
(where the < is the trigger)
In the above application, you can also combine LAT if you wish.
So that's it. Easy peasy. Go practice in boring environments to get the mechanics before you take it on the road, where you can use it anywhere you want to calm your dog. Remember to walk sloooooooowly.
You can use it at the start of a walk if your dog tends to be a little fizzy when you walk out the door or get out of the car.
You can use it if you need a bit more focus.
You can use it to help your heel work.
You can use it if there's something that's making your dog anxious as an on-lead version of the pressure game: Pressure games - for when your dog is scared of thresholds or approaching something
It's very simple. You walk, very slowly, in a figure of eight pattern. If you have two posts or other sorts of markers that you can walk around, great. I often practice this on a bit of tarmac where there is a pothole at one "end" of my pattern and a discolouration in the surface at the other. What you're looking for is something you can use to keep your pattern as similar each time as possible.
If your dog is over-excited, just anchor your hand to your waist and keep walking slowly. You don't want to be dragging your dog, of course, but keeping them with you, not letting them extend the lead. they should be very close to you so they have to move away as you turn with them on the inside and they have to keep up when they are on the outside.
By repeating the same piece of ground over and over, you are losing the novelty. After five reps, ten, fifteen, twenty, however many it takes for your dog in that particular place in the state he's in, he will start to relax into the rhythm of the movement, the flow and ebb. The sights are the same each time round, as are the smells. There's nothing new to see here. Calm will descend and focus will come.
You can treat your dog for walking nicely with you, but don't lure your dog around the pattern; this exercise is about creating true calmness and focus. If your dog is the sort that gets ramped up by treats, then keep them relatively infrequent.
As with all of the tools you have in your box, you want to ensure it's sharp enough for when you want to use it, so start practicing in a boring place such as your garden to start off with, and gradually introduce it in more challenging environments. If you first try to use it when your dog is highly aroused, it could easily introduce frustration, so by letting the dog learn the mechanics in a quiet environment, he'll be able to slot into it better when you do want to use it later; he'll understand the rules.
Applications:
- This is great if you have a dog who is really excitable at the start of a walk, or if he sees other dogs in the park. Fall into your figure-of-eight and just keep walking until the rhythm soothes them and you're getting nice focus. Once your dog is calm, you can continue on your way, but if their arousal starts to rise too much again, fall back into it.
- If you have a dog who pulls forwards on lead in certain places, you can combine this with rewarding for nice position. Let's say it's the gate of the park that gets the dog excited; as you walk away, they will probably walk wonderfully, so put a lot of reinforcement in there. If the dog pulls too much walking forwards, move your pattern back away from the gate more until your dog is able to walk nicely in both directions. Get him into the rhythm and gradually drift the pattern closer.
- If your dog is maybe being a bit sniffy and you'd like a bit more focus, use the pattern until your dog starts taking more notice of you and less of their environment. When you start to get that focus, you can start changing up your pace a bit, going from fast to slow and back again, to challenge your dog. This is also fun to chuck into heel work practice. Changes of pace aren't appropriate for working on calmness, so only do this if you want to raise the energy level of your dog.
- If your dog is a bit anxious of something in the environment, using the figure-8 pattern will both help establish calmness as they understand the rules of the game, but can also allow you to use a pressure on/pressure off scenario, where your pattern has you moving both towards and away from the Scary Thing. I tend to use the pattern side-on to the trigger:
8 <
(where the < is the trigger)
In the above application, you can also combine LAT if you wish.
So that's it. Easy peasy. Go practice in boring environments to get the mechanics before you take it on the road, where you can use it anywhere you want to calm your dog. Remember to walk sloooooooowly.
